As Akram Khan's Kaash begins, a man, his back to us, stands gazing at a suspended black rectangle; a woman walks in. Darkness falls. Then the gray backdrop behind the rectangle turns red, and the sound of a single beating stick is swallowed by roaring, crashing music. Let the cataclysm begin.

NEW YORK - If you can only see one dance performance this year, make it Akram Khan's "Kaash." You'll thank yourself with the first percussive explosion of this hypnotic evening-length work, which had its New York premiere Tuesday at the Joyce Theater.

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Danced with exquisite speed and precision by the five-member Akram Khan Company, the work, though not overtly narrative, depicts three cyclical worlds connected to the Indian god Shiva: Preparation for war, war's aftermath and the rebuilding of life.

Akram Khan has become a leading British modern-dance choreographer partly because of his seamless fusion of contemporary Western dance and the traditional Indian Kathak form he learned as a child in London. There are certainly identifiable Kathak elements in Mr. Khan's new work, "Kaash," which opened on Tuesday night at the Joyce Theater, among them quick, thudding footwork and spoken rhythmic syllables.

“Kaash” begins with the enormous potential of space. The density of the large, black rectangle serving as backdrop, the utter stillness of the man facing it, and the silence that ensues once the audience notices him make that space (and the possibilities for filling it) even more palpable than would a completely bare stage.

Akram Khan is now known the dance world over for his work in blending kathak and modern dance to create a unique movement vocabulary. Trained in the classical Indian dance form singe age seven and introduced to modern dance and composition at university, the London native blurs the lines of these influences in his choreography, producing refreshing shades of movement within the concert dance realm. Such is still the flavor of the Akram Khan Dance Company, but it is the choreographer’s command of contrast that resonates in “Kaash,” his first full-length piece.

As Inn-Pang Ooi stands in front of Anish Kapoor’s rectangular void, a woman walks to him, whispers, and the lights go out. Back up a moment later, we see Ooi still standing stage right and Khan and three women (Moya Michael, Shanell Winlock, and Eulalia Ayguade-Farro) lunging at him stage left. The silence is now filled with Nitin Sawhney’s driving bass beat and the vertical line of four dancers seems like an army of forty as their upper bodies explode in fierce gestures. Slashing their arms across their bodies, swirling their hands around their heads, and articulating minute shapes with their fingers with energy so crisp, these rhythms can practically be heard over the soundtrack.

These gestures do not stop even as Ooi is consumed by the others and they all begin to move through the space, occasionally standing on the periphery and stepping back in as another dancer leaves. By now tablas have filtered into the score and a voice has taken over with the “ta ki ta” syllables of vocal percussion. At one point, Khan accompanies himself with the verbal patterns, making his movement rhythms all the more clear as they are both seen and heard. In a breathtaking display of polyrhythms, the others join him, moving and interjecting syllables in counterpoint. Rooted to the floor, their torsos twist, arms whip, and fingers tell stories in numbers.

The piece continues; each segment motivated by or invoking different aspects of the Indian spirit Shiva. Creator, destroyer, and god of dance, Khan explores the many facets of Shiva and things associated with him. Perhaps the arm raised overhead with a hooked hand symbolizes the cobras around his neck. In silence Khan covers Michael’s eyes from behind, which could be referring to Parvati and the legend of Shiva’s third eye.

“Kaash,” (the Hindi word for “if”) intelligently cycles through destruction, its aftermath, and recreation, arriving right back where it started like one comprehensive flashback. It includes spaces enough for observers to create their own sights, sounds, and ideas to add to the story throughout the process. In the midst of watching the piece, I started hoping that Kapoor and lighting designer Aideen Malone were making use of some optical illusion with their big black rectangle. Perhaps staring at it for an hour was going to cause me to continue seeing it even after I left the theatre, much like the lingering flash of a camera. This didn’t happen quite so literally, but Khan and his collaborators did provide a definite space to which my mind’s eye returns, a permanent palimpsest for the rhythms, images, thoughts, and feelings generated during the piece, an other-dimensional marker for revisiting the experience at will.

"And that's when my body started getting really confused," said Khan, whose company has been winning acclaim during its current tour in the U.S. and Canada. "I didn't understand why I couldn't look like everyone else doing those movements, although there are certainly similarities [between Eastern and Western classical dance], as well as differences, in the disciplines. But I decided to play on those differences."

Khan and his dancers will make their Chicago debut this weekend at the Museum of Contemporary Art Theater, performing "Kaash" (the Hindu word for "if"). A work for five dancers (including the choreographer), it evokes the possible connections between the mystical realm of ancient Hindu philosophy and the more rational principles of contemporary physics.

In ballet, the tendency is to concentrate on the feet and legs, and the lift of the upper body that suggests a weightless, airborne quality. In modern dance, the pelvis is all-important -- with contractions and releases of energy pitted in the center of the body.

But with Akram Khan and his remarkable troupe of dancers --who made their Chicago debut Friday at the Museum of Contemporary Art Theatre as part of an international tour -- it's the hands and arms and the angle of the head and back that most often grab your eye.

His work is steeped in the traditions of Kathak, a 500-year-old Indian dance, but his attitude is pure 21st Century. Weaving folklore, politics, philosophy, music and movement, choreographer Akram Khan has created Ma, a show of physical, intelligent dance

Edinburgh festival: East meets West for the lord of confusion dance Akram Khan’s fusion of Kathak and modern dance is putting the ensemble centre stage, says Kelly Apter in The Times.

You don’t often hear an outstanding performer say he has decided to take a step back to let others shine through. But Akram Khan, one of the UK’s top choreographers and dancers, has in his British premier of Ma at this year’s festival.

A combination of classical Indian Kathak and western contemporary dance, inspired by the Earth and man’s relationship to it, Ma is Khan’s largest group work. It features seven dancers and three musicians, as well as the talents of the screenwriter and novelist Hanif Kureishi.

Akram Khan never meant to become the poster-boy for diversity in British dance. “Everything happened by accident,” he insists. “I never consciously wanted to make ‘fusion' I call the language we are researching ‘confusion'.”

Khan’s ma, Hindi for “mother” and “earth”, is suffused with the idea of place. This intense, 75-minute consciousness-raiser is assembled round concerns and questions about humankind’s sustaining yet precarious relationship with the land. Framed by white sandbags anchoring thin, Heaven-bound wires, Khan and six dancers spiral and whip through space like human rotary blades.

Edinburgh reports: party spirit and Brussels spoil the mystery In The Daily Telegraph Ismene Brown reviews Akram Khan at the Playhouse

Akram Khan's new creation ma begins with a man upside-down in the dark, chanting sorrowfully. A woman appears and screams. Many, many blaring lighting changes and puzzlingly indeterminate dances later, Khan tells, in his honey-gentle voice, a story about hanging upside-down from trees as a child, wondering why all the questions in his head that his busy mother could not answer did not fall out on to the ground.

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